Support We Need To Keep Forums

[motley]

Hello, I am writting in petition to the move of all linkshell groups into social groups. The lack of stickies, moderation options, and other abilities denied in social groups make it impossible to organize and track information about event planning, sticky important permanently relevant information like contact info or ventrilo access information

I understand the moderation staffs need to limit file sizes to keep costs down, but the lack of these simple things have made it difficult to manage simple tasks. Also, the linkshell forum serves as a permanent safe haven for past members, who do occaisionally drop in every few months to say hi or update their status. As a small community within a larger community, we would like to keep our linkshell forum, if this is absolutely not possible I understand but the complications I find myself routinely running into, may force my hand into moving our discussions and business to a private forum, which I really dont want to do.

Please understand me, this is not a threat, it is moreso a plea for status quo.

Thanks every day for the job you guys do

Mot

 

[Sneakypants]

From what I understand, the change to SG was very deliberate despite knowing the change was a step down in functionality in most cases. Unless Make or someone else can say otherwise, I'm under the impression that things are intended to stay as is, at least for right now.

If you need certain conveniences now, you should invest some time in finding a place that allows you to handle your LS business as you wish, or create a private page like you mentioned. You're more than welcome to continue using QCDN to whatever capacity the site provides, but I wouldn't expect any sudden changes reversing the recent efforts to keep costs down.

 

[Miros]

I know there are about 5 hidden forums that are still clinging to life mainly because the process of moving over a forum to a social group is a very long, tedious and monotenous process.

The decision came from Reeve who told let us know that all hidden forums need to be removed and put to social groups. Arc was good enough to figure out how to actually move the threads over so some posts can be saved.

When it comes to a social group, the beginning of the deletion process of a forum starts with making sure the members of the usergroup are first invited/moved to the social group so none are left out. So people who visit the board who were past members will still be able to see the social group. Admins and vB editors still have access to who is in a usergroup and can make the correct adjustments.

The features right now suck and I think we can all admit it. I know there's a lot of vBulletin subscribers bugging vBulletin to clean up the social groups in the next update so just keep your fingers crossed.

 

[motley]

ok thanks for the feedback

 

[Reeve]

Hi Motley,

On paper, social groups would be an excellent place for the linkshell's but you are absolutely right in saying that it lacks some of the basic functionality we have come to expect from forums.

A lot of vbulletin forum owners (including me) have raised issues like the ones you noted as a huge obstacle holding our sites back.

The developers seem to understand the issue and shared that the problem is with the underlying code. If you are familiar with programing, the vbulletin 3 series isn't entirely written in OOP and certain parts of it that handle sticky threads and moderation are not, in a sense, reusable. Its a shame really.

We all hope this will be fixed but we haven't seen any timelines as to when. I personally don't think it will happen in next 12 months as the devs are hitting higher priority issues first that will pave the way for this.


So why is QCDN going this route? Its not a personal desire, I can say that much. Its a technical one so far as that goes.

The usergroups have their own set of permissions.
Forums can have their own permissions.

When you have a lot of usergroups (we had like 50 at one point) and a lot of linkshell forums (again about 50), then the resources needed for it go up exponentially (50 x 50). The system wasn't really designed with that in mind although it will handle it with enough server resources.

The lack of stickies, moderation options, and other abilities denied in social groups make it impossible to organize and track information about event planning, sticky important permanently relevant information like contact info or ventrilo access information

I can probably add a blank "note" field that shows up at the top of each group's page. The group owner's can edit it and add things like ventrillo info or other, sticky, type info. do you think that will help in the meantime?

Event Planning -- this is another sore point for me and most other vbulletin admins because the calendar hasn't really been updated since the vbulletin 2.x days about 8 years ago. We want a more modern system where people can schedule and co-ordinate events and more importantly we want to tie that back into social groups, forums and blogs. Its something I've always wanted to improve since its a feature that most people on here would like to have and use but the options available at this moment are a bit limited. Its not for a lack of trying. One great mod I found for this hasn't been updated in a very long time.

If you have ideas, I am open to them.

Peace,
- John

 

[motley]

Reeve, thanks for taking the time in addressing the issue, its really awesome to see that its something youve already questioned with vBulletin...

That blank spot would be excellent for the time being, if it is as I understand it, a field were I can put basically anything...

I really appreciate you and the qcdn mods taking the time with my issue, I knew I would be heard, but the amount of info and explanation I got from you guys was way more than I expected.

Keep up the good work.

 

[Georgebobbilly]

Wait a minute, someone didn't get exactly what they wanted... and isn't throwing a hissy fit? What sort of madness is this?

 

[Makelith]

Isn't it amazing?

 

[Reeve]

Hey, take a look at this:
http://174.142.91.180/~qcdn/ffxi/group.php?groupid=38